


An Important Job

by ahimsabitches



Category: Léon | The Professional (1994)
Genre: Gen, kicks the canon ending for the movie down a well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 16:22:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16747435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches
Summary: Done for a prompt on Tumblr: a look into Mathilda's (and Leon's) life a couple years after the movie?





	An Important Job

“Idiot.”

Lightly spoken.

Weight. Lightly placed. Hers. Straddling his hips.

“You overslept.”

“Mmmuh,” he groans and rolls onto his side, knocking her off him. She flops on the bed beside him with a sigh that cannot completely hide the giggle behind it.

“Leon. Get up. You need to eat breakfast before we go.”

By way of response, he opens one bleary eye just enough to yank the pillow out from under her head and crush it down around his ears.

“ _Leeeeoooooonn_ ,” she singsongs, shaking his shoulder. “You’ve got a job to do. You have to get ready.”

He heaves a deep, longsuffering sigh. The pillow stuffed around his head smells like her. Soft. Sweet. Sweat. Gun oil. She must have been sleeping with him again. At least lately she sleeps through the night; doesn’t wake both of them up with jerks and kicks and little mewling cries and tearstains on the pillow and weak punches against his bare chest as he tries to give her the comfort he knows she wants but he’s still not all that great at giving yet and she’s still bad at outright asking for.

He’s still sore from the last time she kneed him in the kidneys. Sore, and proud. She’s  _strong,_ and she’ll only get stronger.

The bed jostles; she’s left it. He lifts the pillow just enough to hear her bare footsteps padding into the kitchen. He rolls onto his back again, stretching luxuriously in the beam of buttery yellow sunlight streaming through the window. His shoulder isn’t as sore as he expected. That new automatic was impressive.

He heaves himself upright to the sounds of Mathilda bustling around with pots and pans and something sizzling on the stove, singing along to some new strange rock-and-roll song on the radio. It’s got too much head-banging for him, but it’s fun to watch Mathilda’s hair flapping crazily as she does it. He glances out the bedroom window to the garden. The tomato plants nod their broad flat leaves as if imitating the girl who’d mothered them. Leon smiles. Scratching at the puckered bullet scar underneath his threadbare tank top, he follows the scent of frying butter into the kitchen.

Two glasses of milk sit on the wooden table big enough for four; he downs one and snags the cigarette out of Mathilda’s mouth as she passes with a plate of bacon.

“Hey,” she says, her thin brows scrunching up.

“You’ve got a job to do,” he snuffs the cigarette out on his palm. “No smelling like shit.”

She sneers at him, curling her lip prettily. The brown fleece-lined bomber jacket—his– falls off her narrow, childlike shoulder and exposes the strap of a yellow dress. He glances at it. Meets her big brown eyes. Raises one salt-and-pepper eyebrow. “We discussed this, Mathilda.”

She purses her lips in an expression that is decades older than her years. “There is no  _dress code,_  Leon.”

He leans close to her, inches from her pretty lips, and watches the carefully-arranged disdain on her face fade away. He pinches a piece of bacon off her plate and shoves it into his mouth. “There  _should_ be. Parent-teacher conferences are  _serious._ ”


End file.
